The Census Bureau released the 2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-yr estimates. It is the first time that we have a dataset that does not overlap with another set. So, in this project, we wanted to see how some of the poverty statistics have changed from the 2005-2009 estimates to the 2010-2014 in the Greater Triangle area encompassing Orange, Durham, Wake and Johnston counties.

Children living in poverty in the Greater Triangle Area

The number of children living in poverty is not uniform throughout the 4 counties. The interactive maps below provide statistics on the children living in these counties by census tract. Census tracts are small subdivisions of a county. In the latest ACS 5-yr estimates each tract for the Greater Triangle area had 5000 people, on average. Note that the tracts may be different from the 2005-2009 ACS to the 2010-2014 ACS.

The interactive maps below show the 4 counties divided by census tract.
Each tract is colored by the number of children living in poverty in that area - the darker the color, the higher the number of children. Click on an area to see the following statistics per census tract:

Note that “children”" are 0-17 years of age.

Number of Children Living in Poverty by Census Tract (2005-2009)


Number of Children Living in Poverty by Census Tract (2010-2014)


Observations

First thing to note is that census tracts are getting smaller indicating that the population density is increasing. In addition, we have more tracts with the darkest shade in the latest ACS. These tracts have approximately 1000 children living in poverty. It’s hard to tell if the number of children living in poverty has increased over the years due to the changes in tracts. For instance, Tract 532 near in Holly Spring and Fuquay Varina in Wake County had ~500 children in poverty in the 2009 ACS. However, the tract has been dividing in 7 smaller tracts that appear to have less children in poverty. When combined we found that there is a slight increase in the number of children that is obfuscated by the change.

Additional Work

We wanted to compare the maps side by side and be able to explore the different underlying statistics. So, we created a Shiny App with the data from these maps.
Future work will involve aggregating the statistics according to the tracts as defined in 2009 ACS.

Sources

2005-2009 American Community Survey 5-year estimates - US Census Bureau
2010-2014 American Community Survey 5-year estimates - US Census Bureau

Contributors

Zeydy Ortiz
Ashton Drew